Wolcott - The Complete Series

This four-part TV-series from 1981 may initially give the idea that it could be something special. Instead most of it comes over as a patronizing joke. Obviously this 'well intentioned series' was planned to go on for longer than just four episodes. Central hero is a black 'Sweeney' if you will, although our hero Winston Churchill Wolcott (who came up with this?) is a much nicer guy than John Thaw's ‘Regan’.

ATV/Black Lion Films weren't pussy-footing about and even drafted in a couple of yanks to write the series. Perhaps this was where it all went horribly wrong from the start. What on earth would they know about black urban London? Nothing much... quite right Wolcott comes over like an excruciatingly bad comic book joke. One can only sympathize with George William Harris (‘Kingsley Shacklebolt’ in the Harry Potter films). As far as his performance goes it is perhaps best described as stoical, though that may have been the intention of director Bucksey.

As for the 'thrilling, startlingly daring and highly original’ plotlines: Wolcott is a good cop (not many of them about) and courageous fella that he is gets promoted to C.I.D. level. Pretty soon he's in the thick of it! Black gangsters, pimps, bent coppers, crooked entrepreneurs – you name it, it’s there. Wolcott, savior of society with a conscience as big as the world, is a man on a mission and he simply ain't gonna have it. By and large it is all badly written and badly directed - although Camberwell-born director Colin Bucksey soon left for mega-bucks (that is to say the States where he went on to direct shows like ‘Nash Bridges’).

Just about every cliché in the book is on offer in Wolcott. It hardly takes a fool to realize that Christopher Ellison's ‘D.I. Charlie Bonham’ is an out and out wrong 'un and rotten racist to boot. His friend and fellow racist, crooked businessman Terry Rowe (Warren Clarke), is equally vile. But this pair are about as convincing as Laurel & Hardy playing the Kray twins.
The litany of racist remarks uttered throughout by this pair is ultimately tedious. Ellison to a black suspect in one scene: “Get smart, Al Jolson”. That said, Wolcott does have a few allies in the shape of crusading journalist Melinda Marin (American actress Christine Lahrti), who gets to utter such lines as, “Didn't you know that all white women dream of having a big black stud?” - and sympathetic Irish Detective Inspector Gilligan (Martin Dempsey). How can anyone take it seriously?

As an inside joke, some of THE leading alternative comedians of the time were brought aboard: the late Rik Mayall (a mere 23 years old back then) as ultra-racist copper PC Fell, and - hilarious touch this - in a brief street market scene Alexei Sayle as a Communist orator being heckled by his old pal Keith Allen (in the part of a NF yob).
Another one of the few plus points is Frank Ricotti's sizzling scorcher of a score. Pity it couldn't have been for another TV series.